Teamwork Sometimes

From a young age, we are told of the value and importance of teamwork in nigh every aspect of life.  Teams, we are informed, are the ultimate productive form, and it is only through collaboration that anything significant, meaningful, and valuable can be accomplished.  As with so many things, this idea is today taken to extremes, with people arguing that we should abolish all individual awards and recognitions because nothing noteworthy can be accomplished by a single person.  It even changes how history is studied, with modern historians arguing that the “great” figures of history are merely the inevitable result of a conflux of historical forces arising from the collective human gestalt.

Much effort is therefore put into demolishing the “myth” of the lone genius, the solitary savant, the individual inventor.  Uncharitably, I sometimes believe this to be a sort of cowardice, reflecting a sense of inadequacy on the part of those who cannot accomplish for themselves without the support of a team.  After all, if I can’t be that great person who stands alone and accomplishes great deeds, then anyone else who appears to do that is deceiving us and themselves.  Ayn Rand found this collective ethos so abhorrent that she espouses the opposite sentiment in her objectivism, expressed in The Fountainhead through the example of the “March of the Centuries,” in which a committee of “great” architects produces an epitome of mediocrity.

Now, I don’t deride teamwork to the extent that Rand does, but neither do I hold it up as a veritable moral imperative demanded by a collectivist deity…and given the current context, I consider that we are in far greater danger of too greatly lauding the team than we are of not valuing teamwork sufficiently.  I have worked on excellent teams in which I am convinced that we accomplished a task together better than we could have individually, but also on teams where, despite the teamwork being strong, the result was not as great as it might have been had we been working alone.  Further, there is a difference between a team and a committee.  Teams are most effective when there is a clear leader.  That leader may be a different individual depending on what specific aspect of the teamwork is being led at a given moment, but someone must lead.  All of the most ineffective teams of which I’ve been a part and which I have observed share this trait: they lacked a clear leader.  No one knew who was supposed to be in charge of doing what, and so very little was accomplished and none of it to the level or in the timeliness that it should have been.

It’s true that the greatest lone genius to ever live does not accomplish her magnum opus entirely in isolation.  At the very least, someone else probably made the paper on which he wrote it, or it was inspired by some past work.  Thus, yes, a team of sorts is required to bring the most brilliant idea from a single person to fruition.  That first idea, though, the genesis of the entire enterprise, is often a solitary venture that is enhanced and brought about through the assistance of others.  It is the ability to conceive that first idea that is being recognized and celebrated by individual awards.  This is not to demean or forget the others involved in the overall process, but rather to encourage everyone to emulate that individual in ideation.

Turning to the study of history, averring that history’s great figures are merely the inevitable product of historical forces, arising from their contexts as naturally and inescapably as a wave, reduces each of us to mere cause and effect machines, deterministically marching along the paths upon which we are set.  It removes all credit, all semblance of decision-making or independence, from the people who together make history.  It’s true that Alexander the Great’s conquests were enabled by the preparations his father made for him.  It’s true that Albert Einstein conceived of relativity only after reading the works of physicists who came before him.  It’s true that Brunelleschi’s perspective techniques were based on previous work.  Why need context make what such individuals accomplished any less significant?  We can acknowledge the context without absolving the people of all credit.  This sword cuts both ways, too.  Or should we not hold Hitler to task for the Holocaust because he arose inevitably as the result of historical forces?  Should we not abhor Stalin’s purges because he was just the effect of a string of causes stretching across human history?

The insistence upon eliminating any vestige of “great person theory” from modern times and from the study of history is part of a broader, insidious erosion of individual responsibility and non-relative morality.  If all that happened and happens is merely the result of what came before, then none of us are accountable for what occurs, good or ill.  If, on the other hand, we have the power to make decisions for ourselves, as individuals, then what we decide matters again.  That might be frightening, but it should also be exciting.  It reopens potential, and it means that those who rise above the common morass of mediocrity do so on their own merits, and not as merely a figurehead for ambient forces.  Yes, a team may help us get to that point, but each of us has the power to lead it.